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The meeting between the finance ministers of Greece and Germany that was anticipated with great interest continued 1 hour and 45 minutes. During the subsequent press conference, Wolfgang Schaeuble said that the only issue on which he and Yanis Varoufakis have agreed are the differences between them.

Germany’s Minister of Finance said that Greece is part of the euro zone, adding that "there is no agreement yet on how this will happen." He pointed out that he followed the election campaign in Greece and stressed that Greece’s problems are not due to Europe or Germany but to its own mistakes and that it has itself to take a substantial part of the aid.

The issue of the management of Greek government debt was not discussed during the meeting at all. "It is not on the agenda," said Schaeuble. "The issue that needs to be currently resolved is the access of Greece to the capital market, which it lost in 2009".

The German Minister of Finance referred to the argument that Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Minister of Finance Yanis Varoufakis had repeated at all the meetings with Greece’s European partners, namely that they are obliged to respect the will of voters whose vote has secured their terms of office. "It is our democratic duty to respect Greek voters but this also applies to voters in all other European countries," he said.

Wolfgang Schaeuble was firm that Greece will have to comply with the agreements signed with the lenders and with the related commitments.

For his part, the Greek Minister of Finance said that Greece’s only request is a delay until May in order for it to have enough time to prepare and submit to the government its draft programme - "bridge" as it is called.

Furthermore, Varoufakis said that Athens has no intention of requesting an extension of the current programme for financial support after the end of February, adding that he will do everything possible to avoid bankruptcy.

He urged Berlin to respect the will of Greek voters to be replied that it is not possible for a government to take decisions to the detriment of other European countries.